


Bergentrückung

by CaptainExtremis



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Adventure & Romance, Alphabeta Soup, Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, F/F, F/M, I'll //give// you rarepairs, I'll flesh out the setting as this goes on, Like, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rare Pairings, Weird Plot Shit, all four kids nearly had to die to find this mythical fantasy world, bc I just wanted an excuse to write a fantasy-Homestuck fic, cuz boy howdy doo, half these characters???????, how in the fuck do i write, no beta readers we die like men, pesterlogs, welcome to Narnia assholes, you want rarepairs?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-25
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-01-30 12:24:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21428182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainExtremis/pseuds/CaptainExtremis
Summary: Rose Lalonde spent the first day of summer vacation in the caves under her mansion. Bro dragged Dave Strider to a park. John Egbert took a walk to the nearby lake. Jade Harley decided to wander along the coast with her brother.All four of them discovered a most well kept open secret; a hidden world exists under Earth's oceans and lakes, a portal to a realm inside the planet itself. It is a place all four kids discover on accident, and it is called "Alternia."
Relationships: I'll add tags as I go - Relationship, god please no
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8





	1. ==> John: Celebrate Your First Day of Summer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Today's a good day to get lost and find yourself again.

They let them out at twelve-thirty, and children poured out the doors of Kentlake High School in droves and swarmed the parking lot. Many of them scrambled into their cars, if they owned them, whooping and hollering with glee and youthful abandon. The most excitable left the school first, and the ones who followed were (usually) more mature, but more often than not, they were simply the ones who weren’t as socially inclined as everyone else. It was why John Egbert walked through the front doors at a brisk pace as he gripped the shoulder straps and grinned at the midday sun, and did it all alone. He glanced around the parking lot and watched cars drive off down the road, back toward the nearby suburbs, but his eyes quickly picked up a man coming toward him, up the sidewalk that led to the school’s doors. He was tall and slender, and had both the most distinguished hat on his head and a pipe held between his teeth of a similar caliber.

The man approached John, placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder, and turned around with John now in tow. They walked up to a plain, unassuming light-grey car, and John’s Dad took out his keys and unlocked it with the click of a button. He climbed into the driver’s seat while John swung around the front and got in the passenger’s side. In a minute, they were both buckled up and Dad ignited the engine. The car rumbled and hummed, and after maneuvering out of the lot, they were on their way, and Dad wasted no time in tackling fatherly matters. “So, how was your last day of high school?” he asked.

“It was great!” John replied. “A few of my teachers just let us watch a movie or play around on the Internet. Ms. Magdaline even showed me a few magic tricks she learned when she was younger!”

Dad smiled and took a quick glance at John and said, “That’s my boy. I’m proud of you son, you know that?”

“Yeah, you’ve only told me a hundred-billion times,” John sighed.

“Because I am.” Dad went quiet as he drove through lanes where the sky was covered by canopies of lush green trees before he added, “Got a surprise for you at home, by the way.”

John scoffed. “Yeah, right, like the _ last _ time you had a surprise at home and nailed me with a pie after you jumped out of the garage.”

A grin worked its way onto Dad’s face and he had to stifle a chuckle. “No, son, no pranks from me. I actually called in a ‘favor,’ and besides, your Prankster’s Gambit’s too high for me to knock down. I can feel it.”

John couldn’t help but smirk as he crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, content in the fact his old man had that much fatherly sense. They spent the rest of the car ride in silence until Dad pulled into the driveway and both passengers disembarked.

John’s home wasn’t much to look at; just a simple two-story house with grey shingles and white paint that was slowly turning grey from exposure to the elements. The father and son made their way up to the front door, which Dad opened after fumbling with his keys for a minute. It swung open, the two stepped inside, and Dad called out, “We’re home!”

John removed his shoes and backpack, opting to toss the thing in front of the coffee table in the living room, but he noticed a silhouette poke out from around the corner, he picked his head up to see who it was; there was a woman, several years older than John wearing a chef’s apron, and holding a bowl almost overflowing with batter. Her hair was done up in a neat little bob with a couple cowlicks, almost like his own. They stared at each other for a second before John broke into a smile and exclaimed, “Nanna...!”

“Heavens to Betsy, John! I thought I told you to call me Jane, now that you’re a strapping young man,” she said as she rolled her eyes. “It just makes me feel old now!”

“What? I thought you said you didn’t mind me calling you that?” John replied.

Jane’s unamused look quickly dropped off and she smiled brightly at him again. “I’m just _ teasing, _ dear. You know you’re my favorite cousin, and you may call me ‘Nanna,’ as long as you like!”

John couldn’t help but cringe a little bit at Jane’s words. His family was small enough with only his Dad in the house, and Jane had looked after him for the summers when he was too young to be at home alone. “And so are you, but I _ can _ say I wish you’d stop referring to me like your son. It’s weird and confusing, especially to someone who might be listening to us talking,” he said. Dad and Jane only chuckled lightly, obviously taking joy from his embarrassment, like any good parental figures would. “Anyway, what’re you baking? It better not be cake.”

“That’s exactly what it is, John,” Jane explained. When he groaned, she continued, “Your father specifically asked me to make some baked goods in celebration of your last day of high school. I owed him as much for lending me some money when I was struggling to live through my first few paychecks,” as she moved back to the kitchen.

“Then _ please _ tell me it’s not Betty Crocker mix!” he pleaded.

“As opposed to…?”

_ “Gah…!” _ John threw his hands up in the air and yelled, “Why? You _ both _ know how much I hate Betty Crocker products! God!”

“I _ am _ aware, and we _ both _ know it’s _ entirely _ unfounded!” Jane defended as she shook her mixing spoon at John. “Betty Crocker dessert mixes are _ perfectly _ serviceable!”

As heated as John and Jane could get when arguing over cake batter mixes, Dad couldn’t help but press two fingers to his forehead and chuckle quietly. “They aren’t even _ close _ to ‘perfectly serviceable!’ They _ taste _ awful, all spongy and probably full of deadly chemicals and mind parasites. She’s _ evil, _ I tell you!” John cried.

Jane’s mouth hung open for a second before she bristled at his words and exclaimed, “Oh, piffle on you! I’m making you this here cake and you’re darn well going to _ eat _ it! It’ll be the most scrumptious thing you’ve ever tasted!”

John sighed, as he did every other time Jane used Betty Crocker mix. The woman pretty much swore by it, so getting her to part with it would be like trying to pull a knife out of a stabbing victim who knew their biology. He threw his hands into the air and replied, “Okay, fine! Jesus,” and began to head up the stairs. “I’ll be in my room. Gonna talk to Jade before dinner, Dave too, if he’s online.”

“You do that, dearie,” Jane said. “Oh, and John…?”

He turned around and leaned to his left a bit to get a better look at Jane, who was coming out of the kitchen. “Huh?"

In the next split second, she had flung something out of her hand, as her mixing bowl had been replaced on the kitchen counter without his knowledge. John was too slow to react, and he was _ utterly destroyed _ by a faceful of lemon-meringue pie. He was disoriented for a moment, but thanked whatever God was out there that he didn’t fall down the stairs. After a minute he heard Jane laughing to herself, her signature “Hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo…!” filling the house, and he wiped as much of the pie out of his face as he could to see Jane nearly doubled over with laughter and Dad standing by her side still fiddling with his pipe and a sly grin on his face.

“Well, son, I _ did _ say there would be no pranks from _ me,” _ he articulated.

John retreated to his room before his Prankster’s Gambit could fall further.

Once safely within the confines of his own little haven, John took a look around. Everything was exactly as he left it, his magic box in the far left corner, his bed directly next to him, and his computer and shelf of coding manuals directly opposite it. John walked over to his desktop and turned it on, and then left his room to clean his face more thoroughly while it booted up. One trip to the bathroom and liberal application of a wet rag followed by a dry towel later, he was right back at his PC, checking over the files he had on his desktop. Just some useless ^CAKE files and a ~ATH files he booted up once, played with, and promptly wished he could forget about. He hadn’t touched the thing again in five years but was too scared of what might happen if he tried to delete it. He ignored all that and booted up Pesterchum instead, and as it so happened, Dave was online; Jade was not, for some reason only God could know.

ghostlyTrickster [GT] began pestering  gardenGnostic [GG]  
GT: hi jade!  
GT: so, i’m out of school for the summer, which feels great! like, really liberating!  
GT: but that just means i gotta find a summer job.  
GT: not great.  
GT: but i think i can’t really complain, i mean, i haven’t even decided on what i should major in. i would go for something in the field of coding, but...i realize i’m not all that great at it and forcing myself to slog through that curriculum might make me hate it even more.  
GT: so i have no idea what to do.  
GT: ...i guess i could look into theatre, or some way to...i dunno. get myself into the world of comedy and showbiz?  
GT: but you know i haven’t done any classes in high school that’d lend to me getting far with that, i think.  
GT: ...  
GT: ugh, listen to me being all negative! it’s the first day of summer vacation, for god’s sake! i shouldn’t be this down about it! i know you’re gonna be telling me that when you get back online.  
GT: i guess we’ll all just have to play more games together this year than we’ve ever done before, as one last big hurrah!  
GT: see you soon!  
ghostlyTrickster [GT] ceased pestering  gardenGnostic [GG]

Satisfied with his little tangent, John switched chat windows and prepared for a much longer talk.

ghostlyTrickster [GT] began pestering  turntechGodhead [TG]  
GT: hey, dave!  
TG: sup egbert?  
GT: nothing much, ‘sup with you?  
GT: out of school already?  
TG: you better believe it  
TG: the public school system decided my academic performance was worthy enough for them to hand me a diploma and say get the hell out  
TG: the old farts at the school gathered up all us big boys gave a rousing speech about nothing important and sent us on our way out into the world under the pretense wed have no idea what to do  
TG: but thats where they went and screwed the pooch big time  
TG: because i graduated  
TG: poor world  
TG: she never stood a chance  
GT: so, you’re glad to be out of school, then?  
TG: as glad as some ugly sumbitch with no friends getting a winning lottery ticket to cover plastic surgery costs  
TG: which is to say im hella glad  
TG: how bout you?  
GT: “hella glad,” as someone recently pointed out to me.  
TG: flattery will get you nowhere egbert  
GT: bluh.  
GT: although, i have to admit, i’m not looking forward to fall this year, because i just...  
GT: i dunno what to do!  
GT: i *thought* i wanted to code computers and the like, but it’s hard. it’s hard and nobody understands.  
GT: so now i’m trying to think of if i should go into building my repertoire as a comedian.  
TG: i dont see why not  
TG: youre a huge derp anyway the audience will love you  
GT: aww, thanks dave!  
GT: ...wait, was that supposed to be an insult?  
TG: aw what no  
TG: i mean yeah you are kind of a big goof but youre the good kind of big goof  
TG: the big goof who shows up on public tv educational programs and sings the title theme and all the little kiddies love him  
GT: wow dave, for being a stone-cold irony master, you sure know how to lift a guy's spirits!  
GT: but all i know for sure is im not going to be a baker! i’d rip my hair out.  
TG: listen dude im not even sure why youd be asking me in the first place  
TG: i turn scratch doctors and lay down rhymes that make chicks within a hundred mile radius swoon for no reason  
TG: except i already know the reason  
TG: my raps reach out across spacetime itself to kiss the ears of whatever southern sweetheart is blessed enough to hear me  
TG: advice aint my thing go ask rose  
TG: you talk to her about it, shell have a fucking field day  
TG: and honestly i have no idea how else to waste my summer vacation so...  
GT: yeah, there’s the dave i know and love.  
GT: oh, shit, i think dad’s calling me for lunch.  
GT: how long will you be online?  
TG: assuming bro doesn’t drag me to the park and either tries to lay a twenty bar beatdown on my ass or throws down the sick fires right then and there?  
TG: ill be here all night ladies and germs and don’t bother trying to sneak out before the performance is over because benny is watching the front doors all 6 foot 5 and 300 pounds of him.  
TG: you try to dip out of dave striders routine hell dip your head into the lobby fountain and then dip your ass back through the door  
GT: alright, dave, i’m holding you to that!  
GT: bye!  
TG: later  
ghostlyTrickster [GT] ceased pestering  turntechGodhead [TG]

Time for lunch came and went. Dad grilled some salmon, which was always excellent, before he helped Jane finish up the cake she was baking. When the timer on the oven hit two minutes, Jane asked (read: good-naturedly forced) John to sit at the kitchen table again so he could receive his reward for a hard-fought schoolyear; John was, understandably, not looking forward to cake. The timer dinged a couple times and Jane quickly slipped on a pair of mitts and she opened the oven’s door and retrieved the cake. It was a double-layered vanilla mix with some strawberry and vanilla icing, colored green, with blue-and-white sprinkles. John only twisted his lips into a firmer grimace; he wasn’t going to admit that it at least _ looked _ appealing.

Jane set the cake down at the table as Dad joined them, absentmindedly fiddling with his pipe. They all remained quiet for a moment until Jane retrieved a knife from one of the kitchen drawers and cut into the cake, taking out a sizable triangular piece, which she set on a plate and slid it in front of John. There was another pause before Jane piped up, “Well, John? This is your celebration. All eyes on you, as they say.”

John frowned as he looked from the cake back up to his cousin and dad and back down again. The slice of spongy confectionary sat there, waiting, taunting him. Although he really, truly despised the stuff, he still picked up his fork and used the flat edge to cut a smaller piece off the tip, which he then speared and ate. He chewed quickly and swallowed, and found that it wasn’t as disgusting as he expected. But then, Jane’s fingers could work magic in the kitchen, if previous years of experience being babysat by her were anything to go by.

Jane and Dad seemed happy enough with his reaction and both took a place at the table with him and began liberally cutting up the cake even more. By the time they had gone through two slices of cake, John had finished the one Jane served him and he knew he couldn’t get out of this easily, so he took another small slice of cake and slowly ate that one, too. After finishing both, John took a deep breath and said, “Alright,” as he stood up. “I’m pretty full. You mind if I go on a quick walk?”

Dad and Jane took a quick glance at each other and nodded before they turned back to John and Dad said, “Of course not. Just watch yourself, son. I love you.”

“Love you too, Dad.” John stood up, turned and walked to the front door, and left the house behind. By now, the world had rotated enough that the sun was beginning its descent through the sky. Not by much; when John had checked the oven's clock before he left, it was only about 2:30. Plenty of time before the sun dipped below the horizon. John walked down his street, then turned left. There were other people outside already, mostly little kids playing in their backyards. Some with their parents, some with their siblings, some by themselves. John took it all in, the smells of barbeques being started up, the sun on his back, the wind in his hair.

He walked to the park in the back of his subdivision, where Pipe Lake was. It wasn’t that large (certainly not Great Lakes large), but it warranted its own park, which was where John found himself after a few minutes, after walking past the country club on the lake’s shore. He found himself gravitating toward the lakeshore itself, slowing his walking speed to a leisurely stroll as he gazed out across the surface. It was mostly calm, agitated slightly by the wind, and John could hear cries from other people in the neighborhood who were busy playing under the afternoon sun. The shore itself was mostly even, which assuaged John’s fears of losing his balance, not that he had many anyway, and he kept walking further away from the club grounds, amongst large trees. Unfortunately, John didn’t notice that there was a small divot in the ground in front of him after awhile. It wasn’t severe, but it was covered in tall grasses and just slight enough that it was bound to catch someone’s foot if they weren’t paying attention…

“Woah, fu—!”

...Which exactly what happened to John. His curse was cut short as he stumbled, tried to right himself, tripped over his own ankle, and fell and hit the water, and began to sink. He choked, some water entered his nose, but not enough to disorient. He managed to get his bearings quickly enough and open his eyes to see darkness all around him that melted into blue the closer to the surface it went. John tilted his head up to see the sunlight filtering down above him and he began to push himself upward, swimming as fast as he could to get out of the water and back home to change out of his soaked clothes.

He was doing the butterfly, the only swimming method he was competent at, and John was pushing himself as far upward in as little time as possible.

Except he realized that for some reason, he wasn’t going anywhere.

The shimmering sunlight didn’t seem to be getting bigger, no matter how hard John struggled. He inadvertently let out nervous choke, muffled by the water and he watched as bubbles of precious air drifted up to a surface he couldn’t seem to break. John scowled, even though there was fear beginning to grip his chest, and he began to push harder against the water. The sunlight remained in place, just out of reach, taunting him with a salvation he couldn’t reach, but despite the grim situation, John wasn’t done fighting. He kept swimming, even stroke after even stroke. The surface didn’t grow any closer or further. John kept pushing, one after another, for what felt like hours. He exhaled at as much of an even interval as he could, letting bubbles form and float away much faster than him.

Now the panic was setting in. John kicked harder than before, and each time he kicked it was always a little more uncoordinated, a little more desperate than the last. He flailed his arms wildly, trying to move himself toward the surface at lightspeed. Then he looked back up and saw the sunlight was dimming.

He was dying.

John made a noise, deep and reverberating in the back of his throat. A desperate call for help that no one could hear. He kept thrashing in an attempt to push himself up. He kept ascending, but slowly. In his desperation, he didn’t realize the dimmed light was actually coming closer and closer, until in one last desperate push, he ascended far enough to break the surface.

Water was tossed in every direction and John gasped for air. Sweet, life-giving _ air. _ He kept gasping, drinking it down greedily, repeating _ Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God, _ over and over in his mind. After a minute of allowing his heart to settle down and his body to shift out of self-preservation mode, he allowed himself to lean back and float aimlessly. John kept his eyes closed, still breathing, allowing water to lap up against his skin because it let him know he was _ alive. _ He was alive and hadn’t made his dad and cousin worried sick and they wouldn’t cry when they found out he drowned and they wouldn’t have to bury him. He allowed himself to smile, albeit weakly, knowing he’d somehow made it. So he remained, until the foggy notion of _ why _ rattled around in his head too much. Why hadn’t he gotten closer to the surface, no matter how much he swam toward it? Why hadn’t anyone dove in after him? And why did it feel like it was dark out?

It was only then he opened his eyes. John tilted himself forward and went back to treading water to get a good look at his surroundings, and his eyes nearly popped out of his head. Wherever he was, it was nowhere _ near _ Washington state. It was indeed dark out, and instead of a park surrounded with trees it was all open flatland and...and were there _ two _ moons up there in the sky? John only stared up as he took it in and confirmed that, yes, there were two moons there, pink and green (ugly bright green, too, not a dark green that was easy on the eyes).

And all around him was nothing but a small pond, not the lake he had fallen into. John only kept treading water for another minute before he swam over to the edge and pulled himself out. He was surprised to find that, instead of biting cold, the air outside was warm. He didn’t really have a good point of reference, but John guessed it was about as hot as Texas in the winter months. Or at least in Austin. And as his eyes adjusted to the dark, he saw, off in the distance, buildings. They looked a little off, even at this distance; he wasn’t an architect, but even John knew that buildings needed to have better structural integrity than just having entire rooms placed on the side of a wall with no support below or above it. That was a disaster waiting to happen.

But considering he was out in the middle of God-knew-where, he didn’t have a better choice or idea than start a long trek toward the buildings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) I will make "cover art" for this. At some point.
> 
> 2) This popped into my head when I thought of writing up some rarepairs I wanted to see, but even this goddamned site doesn't have enough of.
> 
> Everything spiraled out of control from there.
> 
> 3) How the fuck does one write Dave Strider?


	2. ==> Rose: Argue With Roxy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time to look inside yourself and ask, "Just what am I willing to put up with today?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, (possible) OOC arguments in the Lalonde household and ignoring Nepeta's lusus' canon height.
> 
> Please forgive me, I think Rose is even harder to write than Dave.

Rose awoke from a refreshing afternoon nap and sat up to stretch. School had gone quickly enough after she had walked herself a couple miles to the bus stop and rode the rest of the way. The day amounted to little more than her homeroom staying together to watch the obligatory movie and the majority had chosen Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, something she was so painfully neutral on, it was almost laughable. She couldn’t fault Miss Rowling for her attention to detail and the magic system she created, but a series detailing the secret lives of modern wizards was not something she could find herself defending. That was why she didn’t watch for long and instead moved to her AP Psych class and joined in the activities there, which amounted to little more than most of the students surfing the Internet. Rose didn’t talk to anyone, which was just as well; she had been busy thinking of where to take _ Complacency of the Learned, _ and wrote down a few notes and plot points in the margins of her notebook. Her teacher had taken some interest in it, though, when he saw she wasn’t socializing. He had always been cordial enough. 

Either way, the reason behind her decision to clock out for a couple hours back at home was because she had been up until 2 a.m. the previous night listening to John over Pesterchum ramble excitedly about the summer and what he was going to do and what he wanted to do with her and Dave, and about how Jade was going to visit them for the first time in forever. She honestly _ was _ surprised Jade hadn’t flown out to the mainland sooner, since she had told Rose herself that her brother and Rose's sister had started SkaiCorp, and was big enough to blow every other tech company out of the bloody water. She was even more surprised John had kept her in her seat until that late at night/early in the morning. Damn John and his overly friendly attitude, he had that face no one could say “no” to.

So she had opted to sleep for a couple hours in the afternoon to keep her circadian rhythm in check and keep herself sharp for the rest of the day.

Pity was, she didn’t necessarily know how to spend it.

She had already written more of _ Complacency of the Learned. _ Several chapters, in fact. She had kept her writing streak up by refining one of her few psychological profiles, specifically John, since she had talked with him most recently. What he’d said had actually shed more light on his mindset than he probably realized; for one thing, his depression was getting worse. Then she had knitted a couple small scarves as a warm up before she knocked a good chunk of progress out of a larger one she had planned to give Jade when she came to visit.

Rose sighed as she pulled her shirt down over her head, the one she had left draped over her computer chair, and glanced at the clock. It was 4:05 p.m. She grimaced. She’d have to start on dinner pretty soon. Then she cast a glance at her bedroom door; it was closed, thank God. After another minute, she considered she might as well get started on it early and approached said door and cracked it open. The air beyond was deathly still and the shadows of late afternoon danced along the opposite wall. Rose sighed and left the safety and comfort of her room fully. Time to deal with the resident oppressor of the household. And that giant, ugly wizard statue.

Rose huffed and slunk her way around the upper floor of her house and toward the stairs. Oddly enough, she hadn’t seen Roxy anywhere from up there, which was already disconcerting enough, until she actually looked a bit closer and saw someone rummaging through the kitchen cabinets downstairs, and doing so very clumsily for a couple minutes before she saw someone stagger backward and away from the cabinets with handfuls of potatoes, green beans, beef (most likely sirloin), some assorted bell peppers, and vegetable oil, and in a moment of horrified realization, Rose realized Roxy was going to try and _ cook. _ She thundered down the steps and bolted into the kitchen and began pushing Roxy out of the way.

“Whu’ the…? Oh, hey, Rosie how ya doin’...?” Roxy slurred. Rose ignored her and kept pushing until she was a safe distance away from the stove.

“Roxy, what on God’s green earth were you thinking?” Rose snapped. “It was under my impression we had established fairly early on that you attempting to cook while inebriated twelve times over was certain to end in disaster, or at least we discerned that after hiring a maid to cook for us for ten months after you nearly burned our house down after consuming no less than _ three _ bottles of brandy, two liters of _ vodka, _ and around _ thirteen _ shots of rum.”

Roxy still hadn’t lost the blissful grin on her face despite Rose snarling in her face. “She was nice, tho. _ Real _ hot piece a’ tail, lol.”

Rose grit her teeth and groaned in frustration, and turned back to the kitchen. “Which recipe were you using?” she asked, not expecting her sister to give her one. If she did, by some slim miracle, she was fully certain it would be _ wrong _.

Roxy stumbled forward, too close to Rose and bumped into her shoulder, and quickly tried to balance herself back out by gripping her opposite shoulder as she pointed to a cookbook laying flat on the table. Rose leaned forward to look at the open page, and she grimaced. The recipe was for something called “Zesty Chicken Jambee,” which was only tangentially related to the mess on the counter. _ Of course, _ Rose thought. She sighed and absentmindedly flipped through the rest of the book; the only thing she found that looked even remotely appetizing right now was a simple stew. She had the beef and potatoes needed for it out already, so she left the book at that page and set it back down on the counter.

As she set the sirloin aside and grabbed a potato and peeler from one of the drawers, Rose heard Roxy mutter something. It was slurred and quiet, so she asked, “What did you say, sister?”

Roxy abruptly jerked her upper body upward, as if she was going to pass out standing up, and stuttered, “Nothin’ much, just said I oughta...be cookin’ dinner.”

“Considering your blood currently has enough alcohol content per volume to kill a small bear? I think not,” Rose replied curtly.

She didn’t get a chance to get to work properly as Roxy tried to lean over and snatch one of the potatoes from her hand. Rose squawked and stumbled a bit as she tried to keep it out of her sister’s grasp. Roxy only reached a bit further before she staggered back and tried to reach around Rose’s back to get the spud, and Rose responded by tossing it to her other hand and holding it out of her sister’s reach. “Rose, c’moooon, gimme it...!” Roxy whined as she clumsily reached across Rose’s front. Her sloppy form ended up smacking into a few peppers, which sent them rolling across the counter. Rose only braced her forearm against Roxy’s collar, keeping her in place. “Seriously, Rose, gimme! I need it fer...sum’m. It was important, tho, I think.”

“Roxy, stop!” Rose grit her teeth and pushed back on Roxy a little harder. “You are _ far _ too drunk to be cooking _ anything! _ Let me handle it, like I have been doing for the past twelve years.”

“Nah, sis, ‘m fiiine. Shouldn’t have’ta cook tonight ‘cause of...of…‘cause tonight’s special, right? It’s...it’s the beginning of...of sum’m. Can’t think of the name…” Roxy slurred as she reached around Rose’s back again.

Grimacing, Rose tossed the potato onto the counter, further away from Roxy, who staggered around to fumble for it while Rose muttered, “You mean ‘summer vacation?’”

“Yeah!” Roxy giggled as she spun around to face Rose, seeming to forget she had been chasing a potato. “That thing. ‘Cause it’s a real special time an’ you need a br...a break.”

Rose pursed her lips. “You say that as if I have the _ option _ of respite. As if I have not been ensuring your well-being every second I am able since I was of the age to understand how _ badly _ alcohol dulled your senses,” she said as she crossed her arms.

“Whaaat…?” Roxy exclaimed as she threw her arms up in feigned surprise. Well, maybe it was feigned, maybe it was genuine. Ten years and she still couldn’t figure her sister out sometimes. “Rosie, I ain’t total..._ totally _ drunk. I can still do the...the thing with the oven. What was it…?”

“...Cooking?” Rose grunted as she raised an eyebrow.

“Yeeeaah...! That!” Roxy exclaimed happily. “I can cook. I can cook _ reeal _ good. Whip us up a filly...fit lay...fillet minion. Miggun. Cook us a steak.”

“You will do no such thing in your current state,” Rose said as she turned back to the table and tried to concentrate on actually getting dinner started. “Let me work so I can, at the very least, give your stomach something to digest instead of alcohol sooner rather than later.”

Roxy, as usual, did not take the hint. Instead, she sidled up alongside Rose and reached for a pepper and rambled, “Yeah, sure. I’ll help ya so we can get this...platter of delish goin’ faster. I know how a couple’a shortscuts—sortcuts..._ shortcuts _ that’ll get us done in a hurry.”

Rose scowled and quickly yanked the pepper out of Roxy’s hands and added firmly, “Absolutely _ not.” _

“Whu...nah, c’mon, Rose. For real, I know what ‘m doin’...” Roxy replied.

“No, you do not,” Rose snapped back. “You are drunk and that is final. Let me handle this.”

Roxy attempted to reach for the pepper Rose had taken, but was once again thwarted by her outstretched arm. “Rosie, c’mooon, lemme do sum’m with the popato...potatoes, maybe…?”

“Roxy, stop!”

Roxy kept reaching for another minute before she jerked backward and said, “Rosie, ‘m yer sis. Yer big sis. ‘S my job to...to do the guarding thing...look after you, so gimme that...veg...pepper-thingie. I’ll get the oven pr...preh...started up...wait, what were these things for—?”

**“Roxy, shut up!”**

She certainly went quiet, Rose’s sudden outburst managing to get through Roxy’s heavily incapacitated state. Rose herself only scowled at her for minutes that felt like they stretched on forever until her scowl softened into a glare. Rose opened her mouth, but seemed to close it again after giving whatever she was about to say some thought, so instead, she turned and walked out of the kitchen and toward the front door. “If you want to prepare dinner, then very well. I won’t stop you. But do not pin any fault on me if the house catches fire,” she fumed. She approached the front door, gripped the handle and continued, “I will be taking a short walk.”

Rose turned the handle and swung the front door open and stepped into the warm evening air. “Sometimes I feel as though I am arguing with a _ child _ more than my _ sister,” _ she groused loudly enough that she was sure Roxy could hear before she shut the door again.

Once out into the fading light of dusk, Rose sighed deeply. Sometimes she forgot how air not tainted by alcohol smelled, and she walked over to the ledge that overlooked the large waterfall that flowed under the house. She didn’t linger long, as she turned to her left and walked toward the walkway that was suspended over a second brook, but as she approached it, she slowed and stopped. Rose glanced back at her house, where the kitchen was, and subconsciously knew Roxy was still there. Probably slumped against the fridge, another martini in her hand. She grimaced and glanced back at the walkway and decided that maybe just relaxing by the water would be enough to calm herself down after a couple minutes, so, in spite of all good sense and judgement, Rose clambered down from the raised concrete platform that formed the foundation of her house and made her way to the large waterfall.

The ground dipped more the closer she got until she was trudging over rocks sprayed with mist, and Rose slowed herself down considerably as she stepped over large boulders to get closer to the roaring water. Eventually, she was only several feet away from the falls and getting misted; she sighed in contentment as the cool water met the warm air of summer and she sat down on a nearby rock and let herself be silent. Rose opened her eyes and stared up at the roaring water, occasionally casting glances at the lake below. She remained like that for awhile, she didn’t really know how long, until the sun had sunk a little lower in the sky and elongated the shadows of the trees. Sufficiently calmed, Rose stood back up and turned to look up at her house, but while her eyes went from the horizon to the left and her house on the right, she noticed something that made her vision snap back to the waterfall.

The ground looked uneven and the shadows looked off. Rose furrowed her brow and, unable to resist her curiosity, advanced forward, still making sure to watch her footing lest she slip. When she got closer, she saw it clearly; there was a narrow path that led behind the waterfall. It had most likely been obscured by the large rocks surrounding the area and the rushing water from above. Rose knew for certain she’d never seen it before, due to the fact this was the first time she’d ever gone this far down the edge of the cliff the waterfall was located on. Maybe, she couldn’t remember exactly. If she _ had _ come down here before, she was too young to remember it.

However, when she approached the narrow pathway, she saw that not even ten feet ahead was the mouth of a cave, hidden right under her house. In retrospect, she probably shouldn’t have been surprised; Appalachia was rife with cave systems, and the presence of running water meant some would be nearby. Considering Rose hadn’t heard the house burn down yet, she figured a little exploring wouldn’t hurt and hell, might help her get her mind off what to say when she decided to go back inside. She sidled up to the vertical face of the cliff and kept herself flat against the wall as best she could as she made her way over to the cave entrance. When she got there, she checked as far as she could into the cave itself, and found that, surprisingly, there was more than enough light being let in to see very far. She took a couple cautious steps into the cave and continued forward. The entrance was a narrow passage that, as far as Rose could tell, expanded out after a few feet, and did so far enough that there was an underground river running through it.

She kept her eyes on the river and walked along its bank, a little deeper into the cave. It must have been diverted from the actual tributary of Rainbow Falls itself, considering it seemed just as violent as the above ground river, churning, splashing, and throwing mist into the air. It was actually rather peaceful, and Rose kept walking, though she slowed her pace to allow her mind to blank and simply listen to the water rushing by.

It was unfortunate the cave had grown too dim to let her see just where the bank of the river started.

All it took was one step too far forward than to the left and Rose lost her balance and shrieked as she toppled over and into the drink.

Rose hit the water and it enveloped her and carted her off like a shoplifter caught on camera. She was spinning for a few seconds, thoroughly confounding her sense of direction which made it hard for her to get herself righted according to which way was down. Before she could get herself steadied, she felt herself slam into the hard rock shelf that served as the riverbank, and she gasped, releasing some of her precious supply of air. Rose did her best to keep herself quiet as she was jostled every which way, and despite having the wind knocked out of her and stinging pain going up and down the left side of her body, she pushed herself upward and managed to break the surface of the water.

She gasped for air, but was almost cut off a couple times as the white water rapids threatened to overwhelm her again. Rose fought against it valiantly, despite a numbess slowly creeping up her left arm. She didn’t know how long she’d been fighting to keep her head above the water, but it ended after the current had turned her to look dead ahead and saw that the roar of water got louder, and it sounded like it was cascading, even though it looked like the river stopped at a dead end. That could only mean one thing.

There was a drop straight ahead of her.

By the time Rose had decided a panicked yell was in order, she’d been dumped over the edge and fell several feet before she hit the water below and her inertia caused her to hit a jagged rock in the shallow area of the impact. She thanked whatever God was out there that it hadn’t been sharp enough to puncture any lower than dermis, and it hadn’t hit her in a vital area. Still, she could already feel the wound sting, and knew she was going to have a nasty bruise or scar on her right hip.

After another moment of getting over the mild shock, Rose swam upward and broke the water’s surface, and sputtered. When she opened her eyes however, she found that the ledge she had fallen from was…

She squinted up and saw the top of wherever the ledge she’d been dumped over disappear into the darkness. “That’s..highly improbable…” she muttered to herself. “I was barely falling for three seconds.” And yet, the physical evidence stated otherwise, despite the fact that the waterfall from said ledge was nowhere near as voluminous as the one that had deposited her down there; it was barely a trickle of water. Rose sighed deeply, and when the feeling of cold air hit her shoulder, she hissed and brought her hand up to cover it. When she looked down, she saw there was a sizable gash running across the top, and her palm was covered in blood. Rose grimaced and turned herself around in the shallow river at the base of the cliff and saw that, surprisingly, the cave was now better lit than before.

Because there was some sort of sconce on the wall to her right.

Rose stared for a moment, trying to process the fact there might be someone actually _ living _ down here before she got ahold of herself and swam to shore. It was difficult with one arm essentially out of commission, but she managed to do that and drag herself out of the water to boot. From what she could see, she had two options; the river continued on down deeper into the cave, and next to the sconce was another cave the led further away from the river. Rose didn’t have to consider long, as she was essentially down one arm, and she walked into the entrance to the offshoot caver.

To her surprise, she didn’t walk for very long before she discovered something. All she really did to find it was saunter down a long, narrow cavern before she came to another cave opening that had some sort of living space inside it. The room she could see had a couch, a rug (made of some animal with a virgin snow white pelt she couldn’t recognize), and some electronics that looked like they were made out of a bug carapace. Rose frowned and looked down to see two small plateaus that went right down to ground level, which she gladly clambered down.

Once she was on the ground, she noticed there was a bit more to the cave than she had seen at first, and she began to wander around. There really wasn’t much to look at, just more pelts, a couple animal carcasses (that were definitely _ not _ native to New York), and something resembling a refrigerator. Rose’s overbearing sense of caution kept her from opening it. After another minute, she came across something else on the wall, which prompted her to inspect it more closely.

It looked like some sort of table, arranged into four quadrants. Each table had six rows by six columns, and each square had a symbol painted above or below it in relation to its location on the cave wall: a heart in the upper-left, a diamond in the upper-right, a spade in the lower-left, and a club in the lower-right. That wasn’t what was so strange about the tables, though. What was strange was what was painted in each intersecting square. They were humanoids, but with grey skin and horns. And there were a _ lot _ of them, all acting out little scenes in each table. The ones in the heart and diamond quadrant were usually holding hands, though some in the heart quadrant were kissing. There were usually three of the strange humanoids in the clubs quadrants, and they all seemed to be conversing. The ones in the spade quadrant were also depicted kissing, but were equally depicted fighting, too.

Rose kept squinting at it all, completely lost despite creating theories just as fast as she discarded them. “What in the name of—?”

She was cut off when she felt something tickle the back of her neck. It was warm, slightly wet, and she could hear gentle plodding behind her, like footsteps. She froze for a moment, and when she knew she was still breathing, she slowly turned her head, and came face-to-face with a giant, white cat with two mouths. It was breathing lightly, bent over and had been sniffing the back of her head. Rose remained frozen stock-still in case whatever she did frightened it, and remained that way for a few minutes. Eventually, she figured she should do...something. “Erm...hello?”

The giant cat regarded her in silence, occasionally tilting its head before leaning forward more, and before Rose could react, the cat had picked her up in its lower mouth and swiveled around to take her...somewhere. Rose felt her shoulder burn from the agitation from both being carried by her collar and from the minor flailing she had done when it first picked her up. She was fairly certain this was causing her shoulder to bleed more, but at the moment, she couldn’t do much about it. It was a relatively short walk, thankfully, before the cat placed Rose down on the floor in front of the mouth of the cave. She could see the outside clearly, and wherever this place was, it was right in the middle of a lush jungle, in the middle of the night.

Rose gazed out of the cave entrance in wonder, and took a few steps forward. The cat, however, didn’t seem keen on letting Rose go, as before she could even reach the threshold, she felt something tug at the edge of her dress, causing her to fall backward with a small yelp and land on her back. This brought about more unpleasant burning from the wound on her shoulder, which made her grit her teeth and hiss again as she clutched at it. The cat didn’t seem to notice as it took a step forward and settled back down, one of its paws resting firmly over the edge of Rose’s dress to keep her from moving. It then let loose a loud yowl that echoed around the night air and seemed to reverberate for some distance before it faded out again, and after a minute, did the same thing before it lowered its head to rest.

Rose looked from the cat back to the outside and wondered just what in the world it was calling for. Given the context of the situation, there was little to no chance it was for a mate. This cat looked too alien to have a heat cycle, but then, it wasn’t impossible. The more likely possibility was it was calling its family, having caught an intruder. But the question of who made the diagram on the cave wall stood out as being a flaw in that theory, as Rose was certain this cat did not possess the mind nor the motor control to draw such a detailed thing, which meant that, possibly, one of those strange humanoids would appear to heed its call? There was no way to find out unless she stayed right where she was.

“...I suppose I do not have much of a choice, do I?” she asked the cat as she looked back at its paw resting on her clothes.

All it did was purr innocently.


	3. ==> Dave: Spend Time With Bro

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

It was hot out today. It was hot out every day in Texas, and being surrounded with reflective steel and heat-trapping asphalt didn’t make it easier, which was why Dave tended to wear white clothes; it was also one of the few reasons he was thankful for his complexion. He walked down the sidewalk, away from Northside High School, and back toward his apartment in the one-hundred two degree weather. The crowd from the school had mostly dispersed, thanks to most of the students taking their cars and driving off into the bustling city streets. Dave didn’t have one, obviously. And he didn’t need one either. Home wasn’t really that far away.

He was torn from his thoughts as someone brushed past him and he jerked his head up to see a brunette girl jog by. She was familiar, definitely went to the same school, but Dave didn’t know her name; really, who could be asked to remember names in a high school smack in the middle of the largest city in the state? “Heya, Dave!” she called back as she ran forward; Dave only gave her an unironic nod in response, and pretty soon, she disappeared around a corner and he went back to staring at the sidewalk in front of him. This was, on the other hand, a reason he hated being who he was. It started in grade school, as all good backstories do; odd looks tossed his way, kids asking why he was so pale and why his hair was ghostly white. They asked why his eyes were blood-red like a vampire, so he asked Bro to buy him shades. But as the years wore on, it was replaced with gossip. Dave overheard it when he passed by groups during lunch or on the playground who thought he wasn’t paying attention. The way he was always so quiet. The way he liked collecting dead things and taking photos over talking to other people. The way he was always kissing up to teachers. The ones kids label “weird” are given a fate worse than death.

But the years passed and Dave got to high school, and the whole fascination with him wore off with hundreds of other students from all walks of life, and in that time, a miraculous turnaround happened. Rumors started up about this ridiculous webcomic that was so unabashedly ironic, so interlaced with contradictions, that it became an avant-garde sleeper hit almost overnight. It was called  _ Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff. _ The students puzzled over who could have made it, until one kid, Sage, if he remembered correctly, found out and outed him. Dave didn’t know how, could have seen him screwing around in the library and enter his password on the hosting site he used for the comic. Either way, Dave quickly became a pseudo-celebrity, and when he demonstrated his sick fires during the closing days of freshman year, it was firmly-established that the decade of the coolkid was in at Northside. All of a sudden, he had influence, power, more prestige than he could possibly spend in a lifetime, and hundreds of admirers.

_ But no real friends, _ he thought,  _ besides the ones you’ve got on Pesterchum. They like you ‘cause you’re weird. They look at you like a fifty-two organ donor shipping spill on Disaster Avenue; with a mix of intrigue and disgust. It won’t last. _

Dave glanced up when he saw the familiar storefronts that denoted his apartment was coming up. After passing six outlets, he turned and opened the door to his building and immediately relished in the miracle of central air conditioning. There wasn’t anyone else in the office except a skinny twig of a man behind a desk in the back-right side of the room, reading a book that Dave couldn’t make out from where he was and didn’t care about either. When he heard the door open, the man glanced up from his reading and gave him a small smile. “Hello, Dave.”

“Hey.” Dave made his way to the elevator, which he rode all the way up to the top floor. When they finally opened again, Dave was met with a short hallway and a door at the end. He pursed his lips and trudged over to the door, and began fumbling in one of the pockets of his backpack once he reached it. He stayed quiet as he rummaged around for a minute until his hand found smooth metal and he retrieved the apartment key and jammed it into the lock, twisting it, and slowly nudging the door open. He was immediately hit with the smell of velvet and that unmistakable “bachelor pad” musk, multiplied by the summer heat; whenever he went out for more than two hours, it stuck out more when he got back home.

Dave shut the door, and it settled with a  _ click _ of the lock. He dropped his bag next to the door and a second pair of shoes, kicked his own pair off, and wandered into the kitchen. Dave was sweating a bit from all the walking around outside, and he quickly threw open the refrigerator and expertly located a bottle of amber liquid that wouldn’t get him in trouble with the law, because it was apple juice. Bro must have bought a new bottle last night. He unscrewed the lid and knocked back some of it with a quick swig. Bro never brought alcohol into the house anyway.

He shut the fridge and walked back to the dining room table to set the apple juice down and then Dave turned back to the fridge. He was about to open it again when he heard some shuffling and footsteps from behind the door to his Bro’s room, and lo and behold, a second later, gangly old Bro poked his head out from behind the door, shitty Kamina shades and all. They let an ironic silence rest between them before Bro said, “Hey, Dave.”

“Hey.”

“Back home for the summer, huh?” he continued.

Dave paused long enough to glance down at himself and reply, “Looks like it.”

Bro nodded once. “What do you want for lunch? I imagine, seeing as they let you all out early, you didn’t get much from the cafeteria. Cheapskates probably wanted to save a few extra dollars in expenses,.”

Dave paused again to look back into the fridge and shrugged, “I’ll get something myself.”

“Fine by me,” Bro replied curtly. There was another pause for a few seconds before he continued, “I was thinking Chinese for dinner. Since you’re officially out of high school and all, grown-up baby bird that you are, and I didn’t have any other plans.” Dave nodded absentmindedly as he retrieved some ham and lettuce from the fridge, shut the door, and took some white bread from the bag next to the sink. “And I also feel really fucking cheap tonight.”

Dave nodded once and quickly brought a double ham sandwich into existence, which he plated and brought to the table and he ate quietly. Bro remained in the doorway to his room for another minute before he said, “You know the drill; yell if you need me to do some shit.”

“You know it.” Dave heard the door  _ click _ as it closed, and he kept eating until the sandwich was gone, at which point he placed the plate in the sink and took the apple juice with him to his room. It was pretty dark in there, even considering how bright the sun was. This was because Dave usually kept a special sheet over his window that turned his bedroom into a makeshift exposure room for his photos. He wasn’t here to do photography stuff, though, as he slid into his chair and slammed his apple juice on the side of his computer, and he quickly logged on. Almost on reflex, he booted up Pesterchum as he brought up Hephaestus and quickly jumped onto Youtube. Once Pesterchum was running, he gave it a quick look and saw John was online, which led to a conversation we don’t need to revisit.

Dave wasn’t sure of how much time had passed once he finished conversing with John (time zones and all), but he was made aware some time had passed when Bro suddenly flung the door to his room open. Dave whipped his head around to see him holding two katanas in one hand. “Dave,” he started, “get your ass in gear. It’s time for a little one-on-one. Mano-a-mano. Brother-brother bonding time. We’re gonna hop in my car and go to the park, and then we’re gonna throw down like the Lonely Island. There’s gonna be throwing down like you wouldn’t believe; we’ll throw down so hard, the earth itself will shift proportionally to where we decide to throw our stuff down.”

Dave fully spun around in his chair, resting his arm over the top. “Will oceans rise?” he asked with a thin veil of smugness. 

“Yes, oceans will rise, cities will fall, all that jazz. Seriously, bro, get your rear balling so we can get brawling. I’m not dead yet so that means I’ve still got techniques to teach, styles to put on people, and rhymes to spit.” Dave sighed and stood up before he walked to his closet, opened the door and pulled out a katana very similar to Bro’s. As he walked out of his room, Bro clapped him on the shoulder and said, “Drinks are on me once we’re done, alright?”

“Cool.”

Bro and Dave took nothing with them but their swords and rode the elevator all the way down to the garage, where they got in Bro’s 2002 Chevy, hit the gas, and drove away down the streets of Houston. They wound through busy afternoon traffic, and once more, Bro broke the silence. “...So…”

“So…” Dave parroted.

“So here we are,” Bro continued. “...Given any thought to what you’re doing next?”

“Anything but the sick shit  _ you _ get up to in your bedroom at twelve’o’clock at night.”

Bro scoffed, and Dave couldn’t tell if he was trying to to actually chuckle or if he was annoyed. He was inscrutable like that. “It pays bills, doesn’t it? It keeps a roof over our heads and apple juice in your fridge. My ‘sick, twisted fantasies’ are the sole reason we are able to eat KFC every third Saturday of the month, the reason this car hasn’t eaten shit in four years, the reason I can afford a baller apartment smack-fucking-dab in the middle of downtown Houston and we can square off on the roof like we are the main characters in an ‘enemies to begrudging rivals’ story written by Earnest Hemmingway if he was twenty percent more sober and fifty percent higher on ketamine. These fantasies are twisted enough to be so popular that it is no longer twisted up like brambles growing over someone playing Twister.”

“You’re rambling again, Bro,” Dave said.

“Fucking sue me, then.” Bro lapsed back into silence for only a moment before he said, “Seriously. Are you going to college or not?”

Dave wasn’t listening. Or at least, he was pretending he wasn’t listening by staring out the passenger’s window at the shops and pedestrians passing by. He was half-formulating an answer and half trying to act like he hadn’t heard the question, but as usual, it only worked until he heard Bro clear his throat and grumble a bit. “I dunno, Bro.”

Bro rolled his shoulders. “You  _ know _ I can pay for it. I pay for all that bullshit I just mentioned, college isn’t much of a step up.”

“Maybe the college life ain’t for me,” Dave replied.

“Maybe because you haven’t tried it. But then, going through applications and school choices  _ is _ a real son-of-a-bitch,” Bro replied. Dave sighed and leaned his head against the window as the car drove by a couple office complexes. This was very true; when he’d taken the SATs and got the results back, he’d been eligible for U of Houston-Downtown, Sam Houston State, Angelo State, and Indiana University, of all places. Yet all of this didn’t seem like a good choice to him, nothing seemed to click. He figured it was because his interests were too niche to get into a school close by, or more likely, none of the colleges had a prestigious degree in what he wanted to do. It could also have been because of his less-than-stellar grades from junior and senior year, but he shunted that notion into a small box, wrapped it up, and sent it away with the instruction to mail it back in a year. Dave figured he could at least get into a trade school. Electrician was at least a union job. Bro glanced over at him and quickly looked back at the road. He must have been perfectly attuned to Dave’s inner monologue, because he said, “...Just give it some thought.”

Bro parallel parked the car on the side of the road after a couple minutes of silence, and both he and Dave stepped out into the afternoon sun and walked west. Dave could already tell where Bro was taking him, Buffalo Bayou Park, most likely. Bro kept quiet until they were within eyesight of the welcome sign, then stopped abruptly, and Dave did likewise to face him. “Alright, back to basics. Back to the ass-whooping you know so well,” Bro said. “And since it’s the first day of what will most likely be your last summer vacation before American society decides you don’t mean shit, I’ll extend a grace period to you. A slight respite from the horrors of the day-to-day, and you can rest easy for a little while as you try desperately to keep up.” Dave only rolled his eyes, and thanks to his shades, it shielded him from the extra long-winded rant Bro would have spat out if he had noticed. Or maybe he had and pretended not to. It was hard to tell, even after eighteen years. Dave gripped his katana tighter as he continued, “I’ll give you five minutes. Run into the park, prepare, or hide and make an ambush, I don’t give a fuck. Just make sure you’re ready when I come knocking. Time starts...”

Dave’s muscles tensed and his grip on the katana went so tight he could only assume his knuckles were as white as his hair. Time ticked on. Dave was aware of every slow beat of his heart as it pounded in his ears. He locked eyes with Bro, face impassive behind his triangle shades.

“...Now.”

He probably pivoted and ran like mad as soon as Bro’s lips started to move, but he wasn’t being stopped, so that was something. Dave vaulted over the wood and metal fence that served as the barrier between the green pastures of Buffalo Bayou and the hard concrete streets of Houston, Texas. Dave didn’t pay any mind to it and raced deeper into the park, down the path, dancing in between strolling pedestrians who would usually exclaim loudly or mutter something like “What’s his hurry?” or “Lordy, who’d that poor kid piss off?” He didn’t catch all of it, he just kept on running, further into the thicket of trees and then completely off the beaten path. He kept his katana gripped tightly in his hand, and felt like by the time he’d run this far, three of his five-minute grace period were up. He then made a fatal mistake, the one glaring crack in a half-formed plan.

He looked behind him for seven seconds too long.

At the tail-end of those seven seconds, Dave ran into something hard and metallic, a fence shielding stupid kids from falling into the lazy river and drowning. However, Dave had been running at full tilt, so not only did he get the wind knocked cleanly out of him, his momentum flipped him over the railing and let him fall several feet into the drink.

The water was decidedly  _ not _ cold. It was warm and also muddy and disgusting because Dave’s mouth was open but he never got the chance to yell something obscene before he went under and got a mouthful of natural, possibly diseased muddy water. He coughed and it came out as bubbles, sound muted by the liquid around him, swallowing him. Dave flipped over a couple times before he stopped sinking and was actually able to get his bearings, though he wasn’t completely unscathed. His head was throbbing, his stomach felt empty, the kind of emptiness one feels after being punched square in the gut. A flash of steel caught his eye and he reached out on reflex to grab the katana he’d dropped during the fall and thought two things; one,  _ Hopy shit, that was a clusterfuck and a half, _ two,  _ What the fuck, _ he thought as he looked down to where the riverbed should be.  _ There’s no way in pissing hell this shitty little creek is that deep. _

Instead of a murky bottom with sunlight gently landing on the mud and silt and aquatic weeds, there was nothing but an abyss of black-blue and turquoise water caressed by shafts of light. Dave kept staring for a minute before he noticed something else. It started as bubbles rising from the lightless abyss, which wasn’t all that out of the ordinary. It wasn’t until Dave saw the bubbles begin to shift and whirl around themselves that he knew something was wrong and began to swim for the surface. He kicked and paddled as fast as he could with a sword in his hand, and after he’d climbed a few feet, he looked back down.

Boy, was that a fucking mistake.

The water had distorted, and the light coming down shed revelation on what exactly was happening; a cyclone was rising from the inky depths, twisting and spinning, right up under Dave’s feet. He spluttered, the sound of his voice coming out as shot with sudden panic, and he tried to make himself go faster. He pushed against the water as hard as he could, but he noticed that no matter how hard he swam, the surface wasn’t getting any closer. He asked himself why and how this could be, but his thoughts were scrambled again when the water around him suddenly snapped him away and then back around, for the whirlpool had caught up to him faster than he expected. It whipped him around mercilessly, turning him over and the force threatened to pop his joins loose. He lost his grip on his katana and it was flung away with the thrashing tides. In between bouts of panic and motion sickness, Dave suddenly felt the sensation that he was moving up for some reason.

He moved up even further when he broke the water’s surface and the churning current threw him ten feet in the air, but he quickly came back down and hit the ground with a wet thud. Dave didn’t looked back, and instead focused on the feeling of wet sand under him as he crawled forward on his hands and knees and coughed, the taste of salt and brine on his tongue. Finally, he collapsed on the beach and opened his eyes. Through the dark tint of his shades, he saw a beach under a starlit, violet sky and after a minute, he gasped, “Where the hell…”

He sat up slowly, shakily, and gazed back at the water he had risen from like a new-age Aphrodite, except male (but no less smoking hot). The river was gone, replaced with an ocean that stretched to the distant horizon. From what else he had seen, Dave assumed there wasn’t much flora nearby, mostly just flatland. He sat there a minute, quiet, trying not to panic on the inside.  _ Wow. Fantastic, _ he thought.  _ So I’ve just been swallowed up a whirlpool that would make Charybdis seethe with jealousy in the middle of a city park in Houston and now here I am, floundering around on the beach like a young sperm whale who got lost on the way to the corner store to pick up extra krill for momma whale’s cuttlefish casserole. _ He looked up to the sky. “Story of my fucking life.  _ Whoo... _ Okay, okay. Okay. Chin up, Dave. This is no time to panic. Bro doesn’t greet you when you leave your room for lunch? Good time to panic. Bro leaves a note to meet him on the roof. Good time to panic. No apple juice in the fridge?  _ Excellent _ time to panic. This? This is small change. You are Dave fucking Strider, and Striders don’t panic. Not in times like this.”

He kept breathing, slowly, steadily, trying to get his heart rate to slow down and drive away the errant thoughts of what might have happened if the water whipped him too hard, snapped his neck, or if he landed at the wrong angle. But most of all, he tried not to think of how he was going to get himself out of...whatever the hell he was in and how he was going to get home. So he stayed quiet like that, breathing in and out, hoping that maybe things were going to straighten themselves out on their own. He took another look around. “Well, shit,” he said at last. He wiped the water off his brow and wrung out his shirt as best he could. “I guess, on the bright side, I still have my shades. Pity about the katana, though. Bro’s gonna be pissed.”

In a flash of silver and steel, Dave’s katana fell from the sky and its blade embedded itself into the sand, narrowly avoiding cutting off Dave’s left index and middle fingers. He recoiled and brought said hand up to shield him.

_ “Jegus...!” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I literally wrote down what came to my mind first and spewed bullshit from my mouth for writing Dirk. I think it worked out. Sort of.


	4. ==> Jade: Change History Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Careful which pebbles you decide to kick on the seashore. You will end up destroying planets.

This was paradise.

No downtown sectors to make noise in the middle of the night, no industrial district to cough smog up into the air and clog up her lungs and the house’s ventilation...no annoying door-to-door salesmen. Pacific Island was perfect. The island may as well have been her lifeblood.

Jade could see it all from her garden on the twentieth floor of the house with the sun gleaming down on her through the windows and a skylight in the ceiling. It was exceptionally bright today, or maybe it was the excitement of knowing she was going to fly over to visit her friends in about a week. First John, since he was the closest (and she was technically a cousin of his, related by family on Jane’s side), then off to Texas to see Dave and Bro, both of whom she had crushed hard on when she was younger, and then finally all the way up to New York to visit Rose and Roxy, and hopefully Jake might be able to convince her to stop drinking. Or at the very least, start her on the road to recovery.

She leaned back, kneeling on both legs, to observe her handiwork; several rows of plants, from simple trellises of ivy to small bouquets of lavender, lilies, orchids, and chrysanthemums. All were her pride and joy. She wiped her forehead of sweat and stood up to leave. However, before she walked out the door, she looked down at her hand and the ribbons tied around it, and began to untie them one by one. “Let’s see...water the purple amaranthus, rose and lily bouquets, and nemophila flowers, check...pick the ripest pumpkins, check...rearrange the northeast corner by color, done, and...what’s this yellow one…? Oh, yeah!” She snapped her fingers and turned around, sashaying her way over to three large bags resting against the wall. “Fertilize the hypericum!” Jade proceeded to walk over to a row of plants that were a few feet from the window and began to dump a generous amount of fertilizer into each trough. It took her only four or so minutes, but as she went to replace the fertilizer, she was suddenly gripped by the overwhelming urge to squeal like a pig and toss extra fertilizer around the greenhouse.

She took a quick glance around and proceeded to yell “Oink, oink!” and tossed extra fertilizer into some of the other flower pots. When the urge to make a fool of herself had run its course, Jade tossed the bag of fertilizer back into its corner, giggling happily all the while, and she undid the green ribbon on her finger that had served as her reminder. Most of it missed, but this was the greenhouse, it’s not like Jake would notice and get mad. He _ might _ have been annoyed with Jade making stupid animal noises, but for the moment, he was occupied somewhere else in the house. Probably rearranging his “blue parlor.” Jade had a few names for him growing up, but he didn’t really seem to mind _ what _ Jade called him. Except “Grandpa.”

“Consarnit, Jade, you take a good look at me and tell me I look like some old dinklefucking prune, flapping my yap about the weather, or the state of my abode, or what have you!”

She teased him with that a lot when they were younger, and it wore off over the years. They were technically brother and sister, but Jake somehow looked so much older and more mature, with his wavy but well-trimmed hair, his half-ridiculous, half-awe inspiring handlebar mustache, and his sun-kissed skin...which was unfortunately, not true of his attitude.

People thought it odd that a man with an eccentric streak as wide as the Grand Canyon and posh accent to match and a woman who had more than likely consumed enough alcohol in her lifetime to kill half the population of her native state had started a tech company before they reached their twenties, but Jake’s response to that was usually along the lines of, “I _ say, _ they’re making pop idols younger and younger every year and yet no one bats an eye! What’s got their knickers in a twist all of a sudden?”

Jade smiled to herself as she remembered that conversation and made her way up the stairs back to her room, at the very top of the labyrinthine manse that was her home. The house was around twenty-six stories tall, but most of the rooms were either on the first four floors or underground, and in between floors five and twenty-five was a large spiral staircase that led up to the top (not counting the garden, of course). Jake had plans to add more rooms once he’d amassed more archeological wonders, one of which was only a month away. He’d finally gotten his credentials accepted for an archeological dig somewhere in the jungles of Laos, and Jade was just hoping he’d come back in one piece; if not because of angry locals, because his obliviousness was bound to get him stood in front of an ancient poison dart trap after he pushed a lever. Jade could hear it now: “Now what’s this dangblasted contraption do...?”

Despite how morbid it sounded, Jade couldn’t help but giggle; reading out his last words, however they came about, would either be really funny or really, really stupid. She finally reached the top of the stairs (she had been thinking about installing an elevator ever since she had to walk from her room down to the bathroom at night when she was running a fever. Jake had been against it, citing “exercise is good” but it was a moot reason at best and she was slowly wearing him down) and entered her room. Nothing special, just a circular room with one bed on either side. The right side belonged to Jade and the left belonged to Jake. Jade had spruced up her side with her Wardrobifier and some old art she drew in her middle-school years that she was still actually proud of. And besides, it wasn’t like they got company on a regular basis, who was going to care she had mostly just traced over Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff?

It got better as the years wore on. Why, just over her bed, she had drawn an exquisite picture of her interpretation of her parents’ dog, Halley, as a one-armed, katana-wielding badass. Jade had developed an entire storyline where, at one point, Halley had been split in two, his white “good” side, and a black, twisted reflection. She never got around to actually _ making _ anything, but it was fun to dream about.

The Striders _ really _ rubbed off on her as a kid.

Jake’s walls, on the other hand, were covered in decorations. In fact, the posters of “cerulean blue babes” were numerous enough that she could see only one or two places where the white paint of the wall poked out from behind the mess, and God help the poor soul who tried to move or remove them. It had been a point of contention between Jake and her when they were younger and their pubescent minds couldn’t rightly decide on the boundaries of the two halves of the room. Needless to say, Jade said there were several posters on _ her _ side of the room that jake needed to move, Jake wouldn’t budge, and the argument got so out of control they nearly shouted themselves hoarse.

Jade hummed a jaunty tune to herself as she changed a couple settings on her Wardrobifier and switched her gardening gear out for casual summerwear, and quickly walked back down the steps of the tower. She wound around the central pillar that held it all up, al the way down to the bottom floor and made her way to the kitchen to make herself some lunch. Probably just a sandwich. Jake was only a marginally better cook than she was, which was to say, they were both pretty bad. She got the bread, the cheese, salami, lettuce, extra mayo, and tomatoes, and arranged them all in a neat little stack on a piece of fine china. Jade sat down at the table after getting some lemonade (it was warm out) from the fridge. However, she had only taken one bite before a young man burst into the kitchen wearing a green denim vest, tank top, cargo shorts with dual pistols strapped to his waist, and hiking boots. The handlebar mustache made him unmistakeable. “Jade!” he exclaimed loudly before he settled back down. “Oh, terribly sorry! Did I startle you?”

“Pff, no!” she giggled. “We’ve lived together since we were babies, I’ve gotten used to your shouting and sudden dramatic entrances!”

Jake wiped his brow as a show of relief and said, “Oh, jolly good! I wanted to ask if you were in the mood for a quick adventure around the island, but I suppose I can wait if you want to eat your food first.”

In response, Jade laughed again and stood up as she took another bite. “I’m always up for an adventure, Jake!”

“Excellent! Ready for a rollicking good time...?” Jake pulled his Berettas out of their holsters and spun them around his index fingers, a testament to how skilled he was with them, before he holstered them again.

“Yeah!” Jade exclaimed as she met him at the entryway, and Jake turned to lead her through the house. The kitchen was actually on the second floor, so they had to walk through a few hallways and down a flight of stairs and through the foyer to leave, and said foyer wasn’t much to look at; just marble handrails, pillars, and a few antique grandfather clocks left behind by Jake and Jade’s parents. They had retired to the mainland a few years ago and left their children in charge of the manor, and Jake did his best to keep the place clean...when his head wasn’t stuck in the clouds, of course.

Soon, Jake had pushed the front doors open and they were greeted with the grand outdoors beyond. The manor was nestled at the top of a large hill that formed part of the steppes for the mountains on Pacific Island, and from there, they could look out over the lowlands, flush with jungles and treetops. Far off to the southwest was a large beach with smaller islands scattered around in the ocean.

Despite living there for more than thirteen years, there was still a lot of new things to find.

Jade had been so enamored with looking at the natural splendor that she jumped a little when Jake tapped her shoulder and jerked his head toward the horizon. “Well, Jade no sense in standing around, waiting for the world to end! What say we get the fuck on with it...?”

She grinned at him in response and took off ahead of him, and called back, “Race you to the beach!”

Jade was a solid ten feet ahead of him when she heard him call back, “Now, wait just a minute! You can’t get a wiggle on without any fucking fanfare! That’s cheating...!”

Jade only laughed and ran as fast as she could, hurrying down the slope toward the level ground that the jungle was situated on. It wasn’t very thick, Pacific Island was only subtropical, but the way to the beach was through it and Jade wasn’t slowing down. She brushed past large ferns and blooming flowers, under the cool canopy of palm and conifer trees, over the dark, rich soil that grew life and subsumed death in equal measure. Jake must have recovered from the surprise faster than she thought, because she heard rustling behind her and cast a quick glance back to see him jump up on a fallen tree and propel himself off to soar through the air before he latched onto a hanging vine. He swung over the ground and let go to land a few paces behind her, laughing all the while; Jade laughed with him.

They veered off to the right and kept running through the jungle until the trees began to get slightly more sparse and the underbrush became less dense, and then they burst out of the trees and ran down a small slope that overlooked the seaside. It fell until it met the water about thirty feet away and became a beach with brilliant cream-white sand. Jade, unsurprisingly, reached the water’s edge first, and when she did, she started jumping happily, her laugh ringing victory. Jake reached her soon after, and he leaned over and braced himself on his knees. “Good Lord, Jade! It’s like I’ve never raced you down to the beach before!” he exclaimed. After sucking in a few extra breaths to get his strength back, Jake stood up to his full height, a broad grin on his face. “Still…! You may be young and spry, but I have you bested at having a natural sense for exploration!”

Jade rolled her eyes, still smiling at Jake. “Whatever.” She took a couple steps down the beach and then turned back to ask, “Anyway, where are we going today?”

Her brother grinned, closed his eyes, and leaned back, basking in the mystique of his own plans. “Ah…” he began, “you see, just yesterday, I discovered something new! It’s quite a riveting tale, as I had been walking along this very beach, in _ that _ direction.” He pointed down the beach, away from the jungles and flat ground toward the mountain. In that direction, it stopped being as sandy and became rockier, with sharp cliffs forming a sheer drop into the shallow waters below, dotted with jagged rocks. “And had managed to traverse the roiling tides with nary an incident when I happened upon a cave I had not discovered before! Needless to say, I was plumb fucking astounded, but it was rather late when I found it, so I had the brilliant idea to come back tomorrow and go spelunking with you!”

“Is it the one just past the tide pools about twenty feet that way?” Jade asked.

Jake inhaled and raised his index finger before he actually processed what she had said, “Erm...yes…?”

“I’ve known this cave was here for the past four years, Jake,” Jade said with a shrug. It got a small “Oh…” from him and his face and shoulders fell. Of course, she had the perfect follow-up to her previous comment. “...I never said I had explored it myself, did I?”

That brought the smile back to his face. “Well, what the heydey-plastering hell are we waiting for? Come on, then!” Jake stepped off toward the cliffs that ran across the island, and Jade turned to watch him for a moment before she followed diligently. They ran along the beach until it turned from soft sand to coarse gravel and solid rock, and on their left was nothing but the wide, deep ocean and on their right were cliffs that stretched tens of dozens of feet upward, if not hundreds. Here, the sea got just a bit more violent, thanks to the wind being blocked off by the cliffs. The waves never got too high, though, and certainly never violent enough to drag someone away with the undertow unless they were being especially careless and/or braindead. After just a couple minutes, Jade could see the cave Jake had been talking about across from them as the shore twisted around, the mouth was almost as tall as a two-story house, carved into the rock that led into the dormant volcano that created Pacific Island. It was half the reason Jade had never gone inside herself; volcanic activity aboveground may cease, but magma tends to linger.

“Ha-ha! Quickly, Jade, quickly!” Jake called back. Jade laughed along with him as they raced toward the cave, and her mind was beginning to imagine what might be inside. Somehow, going on adventures with Jake tended to kick-start her imagination, and she was halfway through realizing some ancient ruins half-subsumed by long cooled volcanic rock before she saw something glint off to her right and she turned her head to look.

She stopped, and saw a tidal pool next to her, the rock inside colored in vibrant blue and yellow, and she saw a couple starfish lazing about inside it, but that wasn’t what caught her attention. What really caught her attention was the strange sphere submerged in the shallow water. Jade stared at it for a second before she took a step forward, leaned over, and carefully fished the ball out of the pool and brought it up to get a better look at it. It was navy blue and felt like it had been chiseled out of stone. But Jade quirked an eyebrow, because that notion was ridiculous. As far as she could tell, the sphere was perfectly round, or as close to perfect as one could get, and polished to perfection. It felt almost like glass, but she knew it wasn’t, and on top of all that, there were strange light-blue spirograph patterns placed on the back and front of the sphere, for what given measure of the thing was the “back” and “front.” In the center of one spirograph was some strange icon that looked like the horizon line with three mountains above it, one below it, and two lines approaching the center diagonally and cutting off the top of the triangle below the line; however, the longer Jade stared at it, the more she thought it could look like a heavily stylized eye.

She scrunched her face up, deep in thought, as she turned the sphere around and looked it over for a minute. “Weird. I’ve never seen this, or anything _ like _ this before,” she muttered to herself. She paused and then looked over to where Jake was to see he was still making a mad dash for the cave, oblivious of his surroundings as usual. “I wonder if Jake knows what this thing is…”

Barely ten seconds passed before the surface of the sphere was lit up with characters Jade [didn’t](https://www.deviantart.com/captainextremis/art/Jade-Change-history-again-part-1-826650003) [recognize,](https://www.deviantart.com/captainextremis/art/Jade-Change-history-again-part-2-826650036) and she couldn’t bring herself to care about what they might be saying as she yelped, jumped back, and dropped the ball. It landed with a wet _ plop, _ and it was then Jade realized the tide had come in. _ Wait, that can’t be right, _ she thought, _ the moon’s not in the correct position for that yet! _

In her panicked state, she didn’t notice the water below her slowly starting to glow. It got brighter little by little, over the course of several seconds, and when she did notice, Jade saw all the water that had come in around her was now bright blue, almost white, and shining with ethereal light. Her head shot up to see Jake, still running toward the cave and ignorant of what was happening behind him. Her eyes widened and she took a step forward, reached out, and tried to call to him, but her voice was drowned along with her body when the rock under her became significantly less solid, and Jade found herself submerged in water. Deep water, she realized as she looked down to see the abyss below, and when she jerked her head back up, she saw that the strange sphere had come down with her for some reason. Even so, she reached out, flailing against the water to grab hold of it as it was something familiar she could latch on to.

Once she did, however, the orb began to glow again, and Jade expelled air in a panic as she dropped it and was content to let it drift down to the depths of the sea, wherever it was, but it was not to be. Instead, the water around her began to move as if directed by a current, and a violent current at that. Jade was pushed up once before the water calmed for barely a moment before another current came up from the depths and water slammed into her chest, knocking loose more air and causing her to cry out. It was muffled by the water before it stopped being so, and Jade was launched out of the sea and somersaulted through the air before landing gracelessly on her back on a beach. It felt soft and sandy, and Jade began coughing as her eyes slowly adjusted to the new light level. She sat up and looked around to see herself on a beach, as mentioned, at the base of a rocky cliff much like Pacific Island, but everything was dark. Jade kept looking around to get her bearings before she stood up shakily and began wringing out her shirt, pants, and hair (for what meager measure of good it did); when she looked up again, she saw two moons hanging in the sky, one pink and one bright green.

When Jade looked back down, she saw the strange sphere had been thrown onto the beach with her, and rested close by her left leg. She immediately leaned over and grabbed the thing and held it up to her face, glaring at it. “Hey! What’s the big idea!?” she shouted at it. “What did you do? Where did you send me, you...you...you spherical piece-of-shit…!” She shook the thing as hard as she could, but it refused to do anything, which only made her angrier. “Oh, _ now _ you won’t say anything, huh? Now that you’ve just dropped me off wherever you felt like it to fend for myself? Where am I, huh!? _ Where!?” _ She kept shaking the ball for another minute before her arms got too tired and she dropped it to the ground in front of her. Jade hunched forward and stared at the thing, her teeth grit and her breathing shallow and unsteady, and she wrapped her arms around her knees and curled in on herself; she was dangerously close to crying. Jade hadn’t understood what the characters that appeared on the sphere were and what they said, and she didn’t know why it had sent her here. She didn’t even know how; it was scientifically impossible.

But scientifically impossible or not didn’t change the fact she was here, wherever “here” was. There _ had _to be a reason, and that line of thought grew more and more prominent until Jade finally sat back up straight, mist in her eyes, and she stood up and looked up and down the beach. Both directions were equally featureless, she certainly didn’t see anyone else nearby, so she arbitrarily chose her left, turned, and began to walk away. She didn’t get far before she stopped abruptly and glanced back at the sphere she had left in the sand. For a moment, she considered leaving it behind, but then, Jade figured if it had brought here to this strange planet, there must be someone here who knew what it was and how to make it take her home.

She walked back, picked it up, brushed it off, and carried it with her down the beach. The walk was horribly uneventful, until Jade spied a path that led up the cliff when the incline had gotten less steep, and she gladly took the opportunity to get up higher. Once she had walked up the winding path and over the trampled grass that denoted it had been used multiple times, she could see wide grasslands with nearly no trees for miles. However, to her left, far in the distance, was a strange tower-like structure, all made of dark stucco (she suspected) and sharp angles.

Whatever it was, it was an architectural oddity, so Jade knew exactly where she was going to go next.


	5. ==> Karkat: Question Your Life Choices

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Karkat muses upon the meaning of life, and why his is so full of shit.

There were very few times in life Karkat ever felt in his element. Sitting at his keyboard, hacking away at the tree that was ~ATH with a hatchet of patience and technical know-how.

“God- **dammit!”**

Unfortunately, that axe was very dull. Karkat slammed his fist down on his desk as his code refused to compile. Again. “This is bullshit,” he muttered under his breath. “I made sure to include multivariate i-o streams in the main’s header. I type-casted all my variables into the shitty, watered-down data types for this fucking program. I even took Sollux’s stupid advice and made sure I  _ color-coded _ each fucking object class. What the  _ fuck…?” _

Karkat leaned back in his chair and stared at the screen, breathing slowly. He went quiet, a rather uncharacteristic move for him, and ran through where the code might be going wrong in his head.  _ Did I fuck up the methods? Did I name something wrong?  _ Karkat drew a deep breath in and placed both hands on the top of his head.  _ But it can’t be my variables, can it...? Hell no. I checked the site manual, their conventions line up. Or...oh, God...is there something in the  _ settings _ that’s conflicting? _

When he realized he was gripping his own head just a bit too hard, Karkat decided to let go and sit up, and was rewarded with stinging pain where his hands had been. He went back to glaring daggers at his husktop, as if subconsciously willing the code to get its ass in line and fix itself, but alas, no such relief came, and Karkat sighed again as he leaned back almost far enough to tip his chair over, but instead stretched himself out and stared up at the ceiling. He remained there, trying to get his mind off the pathetic failure that he wanted to be a sorting program that could mark certain messages from Trollian with a read status depending on who sent them; Kanaya and Terezi were to be permanently marked as “urgent” and everyone else marked as “fuck off,” except Sollux, who’s status was set to a fifty-fifty chance on a randomized timer. Karkat scoffed to himself. Sollux would get a kick out of it, and by “get a kick out of it,” he meant Sollux would either harass him relentlessly or be so self-deprecating he’d start to feel like a piece of garbage and have the overwhelming and sickening urge to apologize.

Of course, feeling like a piece of garbage was not new these days. Karkat was getting older; in a couple sweeps, his door would get knocked down, his lusus would get culled if he hadn’t died already, and Karkat himself would be forced onto a ship to sail across the east ocean at laspear point. And then he gave himself about half a sweep before his blood color got circulated (har har) and he got culled. Of course, with any luck, his cherry red blood would lend him an even shorter lifespan than a rustblood and he’d keel over before his eyes filled in. Karkat sighed in frustration again to look at his computer screen. The IDE had not changed, obviously, and he leaned forward again to bring up Trollian. Only Kanaya and Sollux were currently online. He scoffed again.  _ Typical. _

He took a curious glance out his window to see the twin moons sinking below the horizon and sighed. “Great, guess nothing else’s getting done tonight,” he said to himself as he pushed himself out of his chair and wandered out of his room. From where he was, Karkat had a direct line of sight into the entertainmentblock, and the nutritionblock was to the right. There were multiples of each room, meant to work with a specific aspect; for example, the main entertainmentblock was built around watching movies, and the nutritionblock next to it was dedicated to grub-based foods. This rule extended to each other room, though the ablutionblocks and respiteblocks were designed around Karkat’s stages of life; one for his early life as a grub, one for his years as a prepubescent teen, etc. Karkat himself walked to the left and up a short spiral staircase and down another hall to reach his young adult ablutionblock.

The inside was lacking in any pomp and circumstance, fitting Karkat’s mature outlook on life, or at least pragmatic. Just a smooth plastic counter, standard load gaper and ablution trap; nothing fancy, but it got the job done. Karkat sighed and stared at the ablution trap for a couple minutes before deciding he didn’t want a shower and decided to just brush his teeth and go to bed. He opened the cabinet under the sink, pulled out his enamel scraper and base paste, and began brushing while staring blankly into the mirror. After a minute, he noticed a flash of color on his face and paused before he took a closer look. Upon inspection, he noticed there were a couple veins in the far corners of his eyes feeding bright red to his sclera.

In any other society, perhaps someone seeing the secret that would get them killed revealing itself on their face would cause an emotional breakdown. Certainly some heavy stress, perhaps. But this was Karkat Vantas, and all he did was stare for a bit longer, slump his shoulders and sigh loudly, and resume brushing his teeth.  _ Maybe I should throw myself out my third-floor window headfirst and spare myself the trouble, _ was the prime thought that went through his head.

Karkat resisted the urge to swan dive off the roof quite admirably, however, and replaced the brush and left to go back to his room. He stopped halfway there, however, when he realized that he just was not physically tired as he had first thought. He was more... _ emotionally  _ tired, what with dealing with his brainless friends over Trollian. He decided he needed a catharsis of some kind, and sleeping did not sound like an appealing fix, and watching GrubTube videos until he passed out did not seem preferable, either. He’d reached that point where he’d watched all the funny and worthwhile videos, and was now on a plateau, waiting to find a new series to fixate on. Instead, he decided the best course of action was to rewatch  _ “Troll Nia Vardalos Plays Troll Toula Portokalos, A Voluptuous Mediterranian-Alternian Who Isn’t Fond Of Her Ancestry, With Troll John Corbett, Who Plays Troll Ian Miller, A Handsome, Roguish Charmer That Troll Toula Falls For And Tries To Talk With, However, It Fails, And She Convinces Her Parents To Let Her Work At Troll Aunt Voula’s Travel Agency After Taking College Classes. She Meets Troll Ian Again, And They Begin Dating, But Her Parents Are Not Keen On Accepting A Xeno Into Their Family, As Troll Ian Is Not Mediterranian-Alternian Like Her...” _

The title went on and on, but Karkat held firm to the belief that it was one of the finer points of troll cinema. Certainly nothing as good as Troll Will Smith’s crowning role in The Thresh Prince, but it was good. He retrieved said movie from the shelf, popped out the disk, and put it in the digital laser-reading device and used the time before the previews to sit down and fish the remote out from in between the loungeplank cushions. Soon as the main menu was up, Karkat hit the “Play” button and let the movie run, and in sharp contrast to how he acted when waiting for one of his friends when they decided to troll him, he sat up straight, eyes forward and alert, and waiting for the next scene, observing each movement from the actors in excruciating detail. Unfortunately, he only got about as far as Troll Toula meeting Troll Ian for the first time before there was a knock at the front door.

He paused and got up just in time to see his lusus open a door that led further back into the hive, on his right, and Karkat held up his hand. “I got it, I got it,” he groused. Karkat couldn’t help but think about who was out there. It wasn’t for geneslime donation; that was for adult trolls specifically, and someone coming to visit? With scant time before dawn...? Either they were incredibly close by, incredibly brave, incredibly dumb, or incredibly Terezi, which was like being all of the above except the brave and dumb parts were multiplied by a hundred and blurred together more than a week spent high on sopor slime. And of course, that was the optimistic outlook. The realistic possibility was that his blood color had somehow been noticed or guessed by someone  _ not _ in his friend group, and they had tattled. There was now a drone at his door, and when he opened it, he would be culled almost instantaneously. Just  _ click, blam, splat. _ Dead. Just like that. Here lies Karkat Vantas; every waking moment of his life was painful.

He could only  _ hope  _ it wasn’t a drone. He got to the door of his hive, and despite the growing sense of dread gnawing away at his acid tract, he knew if he  _ didn’t  _ answer it, it would instead be broken down and he would instead die slowly and in agonizing pain. So, with a resigned sense of acceptance and a sigh, Karkat opened the door.

Contrary to what he thought, he was not culled, but that didn’t make what was actually there any less confusing. Karkat was face-to-face with some sort of deformed troll with a lighter skin tone, a slight overbite, teeth flatter than a rustblood’s, really weird clothes, and no horns. It was uncanny, and he was surprised, in retrospect, the sheer mind-boggling shock didn’t kill him on the spot. The strange thing seemed just as surprised to see Karkat as he was to see it, as it jumped back, eyes wide, and stared at him in a surprisingly faithful mirror of his own expression. There was silence for a moment, in which all time seemed to stop; Karkat didn’t even hear crabdad scuttling up behind him. The alien-mutant-troll-thing seemed to snap out of his stunned silence and he scratched the back of his neck. “Uh... _ wow. _ This is, uh...I  _ really _ wasn’t expecting this.”

All Karkat could reply with was, “What. The  **fuck.** Are you?”

This made the thing tense up and scratch the back of his head again, this time in embarrassment. “Oh, whoops, right. Should  _ probably  _ introduce myself,” he said. “My name’s John! John Egbert! Hi!”

John spoke, but it barely registered to Karkat, as his mind was forming questions faster than his mouth could spit them out. “What? No, you labotomized whackjob, I mean what the fuck  **are** you!?” he cried. “Some horribly mutated troll? How have you  _ not _ been culled yet? Where did you come from? What is going  **on!?”**

John quirked an eyebrow and kept quiet as Karkat ranted at him, and when he was done, replied, “Oh, okay! Well, I’m not a troll...is that what  _ you _ are? I’m guessing yes...I’m a human! But I don’t know what’s going on. Honestly, I’m just as confused as you!” Karkat only stared at him like he’d sprouted an extra head from his crotch.

**“...What!?”**

“A...a human…? Do you not have humans here in...uh, wherever this is?” John asked tentatively.

Karkat sighed and massaged his forehead. “Okay, first and foremost, I’ll clarify where you fucking are so you don’t sound like a wiggler that hasn’t been schoolfed for more than two sweeps; this place?” he said while waving his arms out to the side, “This place you are standing in and bumbling around like a blind troll with a limp and half the required IQ to not be culled? It’s called Alternia. Find a way to commit it to the pitiful reserves of memory you have that  **isn’t ** taken up by remembering how to breathe, so that when another troll finds you and asks you where the hell you are, you can say this with full certainty and get a nod of contempt in acknowledgement of your stupidity before your chug column gets unceremoniously slit.”

It took John a couple seconds longer than normal to register what Karkat had said, especially since he talked fast (like Nic Cage in National Treasure), but he decided not to let the long-winded insult get to him. Meeting a strange alien was just  _ too _ cool for anything else to dampen his spirits. “Alternia, then? Okay, good to know!” John replied cheerily, which got Karkat’s jaw to drop further. He was about to ask if John was just  _ immune _ to insults before he continued, “You didn’t tell me your name yet, though...if you don’t mind. You seem kinda stressed.”

“I...I’m not fucking stressed,” Karkat replied. “I’m just suffering existential dread at every waking minute, and when the feeling of crushing despair goes away, it means I’m busy dealing with my friends’ heaps and heaps of stinking hoofbeastshit.” A pause, then, “I’m Karkat. Vantas.”

This got John to smile and he exclaimed, “Nice to meet you, Karkat!” He brought his hand out and extended it for Karkat to shake, but didn’t notice crabdad until too late. Fearing his charge’s safety might be threatened, crabdad suddenly lunged out of the shadows and interposed himself between Karkat and John and hissed; John yelped, stumbled backward, and fell down, and Karkat cried out and fell to the floor too, but he quickly forced himself back up and ran up beside crabdad, who was looming over a now-terrified John.

“Hey, woah, woah, woah, hold the fucking audio-telecommunication device,” he stated. “Calm down for a minute, you crazy old lusus.” He waved his hands a bit to catch crabdad’s attention, and the lusus turned to face him. “Listen, I…” Karkat paused, took a quick glance at John, who was still on the ground and staring wide-eyed at the both of them, and brought crabdad in closer to whisper, “Look. I know this might be a big fucking ovoid tablet to swallow, but maybe  _ don’t _ cull the weird, squishy alien? This dumbass probably couldn’t even hurt a buzzbeast.”

Crabdad only regarded Karkat with a bug-eyed stare and complete silence. John remained on the ground outside, still frozen from shock and transfixed on the scene, but after a minute, crabdad straightened up and took a few steps away from the door. He kept his gaze locked on Karkat and John, however, as if still looking for a reason to jump into action. Karkat sighed and his shoulders lowered, releasing pent-up tension, and he turned back to John. “Okay, you can get your ass up now. The ravenous lusus has been shut up and will no longer be a threat, provided you don’t try any funny shit.”

“...Lusus…?”

“Oh my fucking-goddamn-shit,” Karkat slapped his forehead. “How blind can you possibly be, John Human? Especially with those gigantic fucking oracular lenses planted squarely on your stupid fucking face?” He threw his arms out to the side and exclaimed, “Look around you, John. There is no one else here except you, me, and, as previously mentioned, my lusus. You would have been able to discern  _ what _ a lusus was, perhaps, if you had been paying attention. But unfortunately for us both, your thinksponge is the size of a bulnut, except  **way** smaller. Or it  **would** be unfortunate if you could grasp the depths of your own stupidity.”

John only stared at Karkat the entire time he was rambling as he pulled himself up off the ground. “Hey, sorry I didn’t get it!” he replied. “I’m just...still kinda reeling. I mean, I fell into a pond, almost died, and came back out to see...well,  _ Alternia.” _ Karkat could only stare at him bug-eyed. He was certain there was something  _ wrong _ with this alien; he was  _ too nice. _ “So I guess that means the crab-looking thing back there is your ‘lusus?’ What’s a ‘lusus’ do, exactly...?”

Karkat opened his mouth, ready to shove everything he knew and everything John  _ should _ know down his throat, until he realized that the night sky outside was a little bit lighter than it had been two minutes ago, when this whole idiotic exchange had started. He closed his mouth again, and then glared down at John. He’d only met him, and only knew about the existence of humans for approximately three to four minutes now, but they looked vaguely similar to trolls; if they looked vaguely similar to trolls, well, he didn’t think that meant they’d be able to handle the Alternian sun all too well. He closed his eyes and pursed his lips for a minute before he glanced back at crabdad, who had skittered through one of the archways to a different room in the house. However, Karkat was sure he’d made eye contact with him for a second, giving him a look that said, “You’re a big troll. Figure this shit out yourself.”

“Get inside,” he stated as he jerked his hand back, pointing to his entertainmentblock with his thumb. “Looks like I’ve got to schoolfeed you myself, since it’s obvious you’d die if you stayed outside any longer than, oh,  **three seconds.** Come on, get in here before the sun burns your shame globes off.”

John stayed where he was for only another moment, the shock of the current pace of events overwhelming him, before he hastily jogged into Karkat’s hive. Credit to Karkat, he played the role of ‘wise and all-knowing mentor’ perfectly, and wearing an oversized sweater was a great way to hide the shivering that was coursing through his body. To cement himself into the role, he stopped abruptly, and John almost ran into him, as he had been spinning around like a ballerina and looking around the hive in amazement. “Okay. You’d better sit your ass down, because I’m going to lay an information buffet on you, and there’s gonna be discussion casserole served up alongside fact stew, with a giant fucking explanation cake for dessert. It’s gonna be a fifty-seven course meal of schoolfeeding, and I’ll be amazed if your stupid ass  **doesn’t** choke on the appetizer,” he declared.

John scoffed. “You almost sound like Dave.”

“What?” Karkat replied, cocking an eyebrow.

“Oh, nothing. Just a friend of mine, likes making really dumb metaphors.” John did take Karkat’s advice to sit down, however, just to be polite. He was pretty sure nothing else could blow him away after meeting an honest-to-God, real, live alien.

“...Right.  **Anyway,”** Karkat began, “as I previously mentioned, this massive shithole you’ve found yourself in is Alternia. We don’t have humans here, obviously, we have ‘trolls,’ which is what  **I** am, if you’ve been paying attention; my hopes are not high, though.” He pointed back to the entryway where crabdad had been and continued, “The bipedal clawbeast you just saw almost attack you is my lusus. They serve as custodians to juvenile trolls,  **yes,** there’s more than one lusus and yes, they come in all different shapes and sizes, don’t ask or interrupt me.”

“Where’s the adult trolls, then?” John interrupted.

Karkat was stuck between being livid that John was also apparently deaf, and also completely, unrepentantly serious. He glared at John with wide eyes, his pupils shrunken slightly and remained silent. John withered slightly under his gaze, which  _ did _ give Karkat some hope that he wasn’t completely off his rocker. “Pray to  **god** you never meet one,” he berated. “The rustbloods  **alone** stand at about nine feet tall when fully grown, and a good eighty-percent of their body weight is  **pure muscle.** This is to say  **nothing** of every other hemocaste. Your ass will be plastered across the walls, the floor, and the ceiling if you so much as  **breathe** in their general direction.” Karkat stopped talking to suck in a deep breath and said,  **“Thankfully,** none of them live on  **this** huge chunk of rock, they all fucked off across the ocean to live on  **different** chunks of rock where they can beat the living shit out of each  **other** instead.”

“Ah, got it!” John paused. “So what’s a rustblood, then? Some sort of troll subspecies?”

“I said don’t interrupt me, John,” Karkat replied. “And no, rustbloods are not a subspecies. I mentioned hemocastes. You heard me, right? Well, you  **should,** with those giant, morning nutrition-plate looking ears. I don’t know how the fuck wherever you came from is organized, but here on Alternia, there are twelve castes on the hemospectrum, and it goes rust, bronze, gold, lime, olive, jade, teal, blue, indigo, purple, violet, and fuchsia, lowest to highest. The higher up you are, the more civil benefits you get, like being able to cull whoever the fuck you want without anyone so much as blinking an eye, among other things.”

John only stared at karkat for another couple seconds before he furrowed his brow and asked, “‘Cull?’ Like, ‘remove from the gene pool’ cull?”

Karkat cocked an eyebrow, though he retained an expression of unamusement. “That’s what I said, John Human. I don’t really think something like that  **needs** any more explanation.”

“So you’re saying that trolls can just... _ murder _ someone because they have, like, purple blood?” John repeated. “Jesus, that’s...awful! That’s  _ really _ fucked up!”

Karkat didn’t think he could quirk his brow any higher, but it seemed John was bringing out strange qualities in him, if  _ not _ killing him on sight was anything to go by. “Technically, any troll can murder another one with a lower blood color. It’s just that the closer you are to being a rustblood, the more likely you’ll get caught and executed by the legislacerators.” He was also surprised John sympathized with the lowbloods, but like hell he was going to say that out loud. Karkat let out air that crossed the threshold between a sigh and a groan several times. John managed to catch it.

“Uh, you okay, Karkat?”

“Yes, I’m  **fine.** Like I said, just...really fucking tired,” he muttered.

“Were you awake the whole night or something?”

Karkat raised his head from his hands and stared at John like he’d grown a second head from his groin. “Um,  **yes?** Of course I was awake the whole night, like a  **normal fucking troll.** Are you trying to imply I’m  **not** normal…?”

John paused a moment before he snapped his fingers and replied,  _ “Oh, _ trolls are nocturnal! Got it.”

“Alright, you know what?” Karkat interrupted, “Schoolfeeding time’s over. It’s done. You see me making this gesture with my hands? It means we’re done, because I’m cutting our time short. I can only take so much of your monumental stupidity at once, it seems, and we have reached that limit. I’m only  **somewhat** amazed it didn’t happen sooner. Now it’s time for  **you** to do the explaining, specifically,  **how** in the  **blistering shit** did you wind up on my lawnring? I’d say you did it yourself, and did it on purpose, but  **you’re** too hapless and the universe is  **not** prone to coincidences what-so-fucking  **ever.”**

John sucked in a shallow breath and rubbed his neck. “Honestly…? It was the weirdest fucking thing. I was walking in a park...do trolls have parks?”

“A wide open space full of natural flora that nearby residents can peruse at their leisure?” John nodded vigorously. “Yeah, we have arboreal plazas in most downtown areas.”

“Okay, so I was walking through a park close to my house...er, lawnring? Is that how you say it?” Karkat scoffed; John’s attempts at adapting to troll culture would have been somewhat admirable if he wasn’t such an idiot. Still, Karkat didn’t correct him, which John saw as the signal to continue. “...My lawnring, and I tripped and fell into the lake the park had.”

There was a pause, in which Karkat’s scowl seemed to gain in intensity. “...For the love of god,  **please** don’t tell me you found yourself on Alternia after you fell in.”

John’s eyes went from the left to the right in rapid succession before he hesitantly said, “Yeah, uh, that’s...exactly what happened.”

Karkat’s arms fell to his sides. “You’re telling me...you got here by complete accident…?” he asked incredulously. John nodded slowly after a moment, which made Karkat seemingly go red in the face as he grit his teeth and shouted, “Oh my fucking god, I was  **joking** earlier!  **How** in the  **fuck** can you manage something like that?  **How ** in Her Imperial Condescension’s ** skintight wetsuit** does that  **happen!?”**

John’s arms shot up in an exaggerated shrug. “I don’t know! I just...fell in and tried to swim back to the surface, but for a couple minutes, the surface just wouldn’t get closer. And then when I  _ did _ finally breach, I was...here! In Alternia...!”

For the first time since Karkat had answered the door, there was a moment of silence. This was due to the fact Karkat was staring at John wide-eyed and jaw open, but it was quiet. John pursed his lips and glanced around before he stammered, “Is...um...are you okay, Karkat?”

He continued to stare at John for another minute before Karkat shook his head and made a big show of coming back to his senses. “Me? Yes, I’m fine. Perfectly fine, mental breakdown notwithstanding,” he replied. “I’m just so in awe of the sheer musclebeastshit that plopped you at my front door that I think I blew an artery.”

“Uh…” John blanched and looked away. “I, um...really don’t know how to answer that.”

“Then don’t,” Karkat said. “Seriously, **don’t.** I have a fucking headache already. You gave it to me. You came out of the water like a siren and I, the witless sailor, came cruising on by expecting maybe a gift of conulariid rocks and a peck on the cheek, and instead you gave me a fucking concussion and threw moldy water plant fibers in my face. I have this planet-splitting migraine and it’s all your fucking fault.” He made a long, almost comically drawn-out sigh and then proceeded to get up from the table. “That’s beside the point, though. Since you’re obviously **completely** inept, I’ve got to **somehow** find a way to send you back to wherever the **fuck** it is you came from, and I need to do it before you end up getting seen by drones, which’ll basically be like walking up to a purpleblood and saying ‘Please rip me open sternum to sphincter, string me up by my abdominal sausages, and use me as a wriggling-day candy-dispenser.”

Karkat began to walk away, toward the stairs to the second floor and John followed diligently, mostly due to the fact he had no idea what to do next. They walked up the stairs and Karkat entered his respiteblock. John immediately began looking around in awe, and his focus quickly settled on the recuperacoon. “Woah, what’s this thing?”

“That ‘thing,’ as you so ignorantly put it, is a ‘recuperacoon.’ Trolls sleep in them during the day,” Karkat curtly replied.

“Oh, so like a bed!” Karkat turned his head around to look at John questioningly again, silently compelling him to explain what this strange piece of human tech called a “bed” was. John’s mouth hung open slightly from the surprise of being put on the spot for a second before he raised a finger and explained, “Oh, right! You wouldn’t know what beds are. It’s a piece of furniture we use to sleep! When it gets dark out, humans get tired, so we lie down on a bed. They’ve got covers and blankets, and at least one pillow to cushion the head and neck. And then we just...sleep on them for about seven to eight hours.”

“Ah, I see. Sounds just as primitive as I expected, as befitting your simplistic species,” Karkat said as he booted up his husktop.

John frowned and asked, “Is...is that  _ not _ what a recuperacoon does? Serve as a place to sleep?”

He was about to click on his internet browser, but John’s naivete caused Karkat’s irrational need to schoolfeed anyone not in the know to kickstart itself again. He sighed and explained, “A recuperacoon’s far more specialized than your human ‘beds.’ When trolls need to recuperate from a long day of schoolfeeding, exploring, working a job, culling other trolls, what have you, they jump into a recuperacoon to rest. To keep their minds from working themselves into a sudden bloodpusher infarction from the sheer magnitude of the darker impulses and visions of bloodlust, each recuperacoon is filled with sopor slime to dull the thinksponge.”

“‘Visions of bloodlust?’” John repeated. “Do...trolls don’t dream of anything other than violence?”

“Oh for the love of...Can this fucking wait?” Karkat spat back. “I’m  **trying** to form a fucking plan here, and it would be a shitton easier without you  **breathing down my neck** and asking me all the dumb questions in the universe at once!”

John stepped back and held up his hands in a gesture of deference. He didn’t stay quiet for very long though, as he watched Karkat bring up his husktop’s browser and quietly asked, “How’s this helping you formulate a plan?”

“Gonna check Troogle. See if there’s been any incidents like this before.” Karkat sighed. “Hopefully, if I word it right, it won’t raise any alarm bells and a crack squad of spyferators won’t raid my hive and maim me worse than a known pro-reform demagogue.”

John went quiet again and watched as Karkat typed some phrases into the alternate-Google’s search bar:  _ aliens in lakes, lake incidents, water portals, portals made in bodies of water. _ It went on for a few minutes before he stuck his hands in his pockets and felt something. His eyebrows arched in surprise as he fished his phone out of his pocket and stared at it before he hesitantly clicked the “on” button.

To his surprise, the screen flickered to life, showing the time as squarely 5:54 PM, at least in Earth-time. Alternia-time was still beyond him for now. And…

Another surprise. The phone actually had a  _ connection. _ Although, John thought as he looked up at Karkat working on his husktop, considering the troll internet was almost uncannily similar to the human internet, maybe he shouldn’t be so shocked. He scrolled through his apps; none of them really seemed like they’d  _ help _ him get out of this, except…

Well, it was a long shot, but a long shot was better than no shot at all. _ _

John opened up his messaging app and hastily typed out a message and hit “Send.” His phone blipped, which was loud enough for Karkat to flinch and whip himself around to stare at John. His eyes flicked from the phone to John and back to the phone before he asked gruffly, “The fuck are you doing?”

John beamed back up at him. “Well, I checked my phone, and it looks like it’s got a cellular connection, or maybe it’s wi-fi, somehow. I just sent a message to one of my friends back on Earth to see if she can help us out.”

Karkat grimaced and pinched his forehead with his middle finger and thumb. “How is contacting a friend back on your ass-backwards planet going to  **help, ** you fuck-muncher? ‘Hey, fellow human friend, I seem to have found myself up shit creek and forgot to bring either a water-pusher  **or ** a fucking bouancy transport device and I am now up to my neck in excrement, as I have crossed the dimensional borders and have no way to get back home, please toss a lumber-cleaving tool into the nearest pond so I can hopefully find it and apply it directly to my skull, as it would be far quicker and more merciful than the drones patrolling the place.’”

“Look, she knows, like, a fuck-ton of extremely obscure and eldritch lore, maybe she’s got a book about Alternia. Or at least a book that mentions it,” John replied excitedly, ignoring the long-winded tirade.

Karkat rolled his eyes and swiveled back around to look at the husktop. “Considering you’re an alien that just stumbled in here and your friend is the same species from the same planet as you? Fucking doubtful.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: just gotta write Karkat meeting John and set up the next part :) easy :) :)  
My brain: eat shit and die


End file.
